One of the first things we learned about the fire truck was how to prime the pump. If the pump wasn’t primed, there would be no pressure, and thus, no delivery of water from tank, thru hose, to fire.
The experience was many years ago, as a volunteer firefighter living in a tiny rural town.
The firehouse, if one could call it that, was located in the alley right behind my house, and was a shed of a plywood building that was maybe – maybe – twenty inches wider than the truck. These days, fire trucks are easy-handlers. Not then. This truck had no automatic or power anything and was hard.to.handle. Because I lived so close to the truck [and got to it quickly/first], I was the driver on many calls.
Slope of Hope Blog Posts
Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
Golden U-Turn
In my prior post, I noted about gold “My view is that the ascent is going to slow down, stop, and reverse in short order“. I didn’t necessarily think “short order” meant “instantly”, but, so far, so good……….

Dullsville
Is it worth getting out of bed for this stuff these days? The Russell 2000, shown via /RTY below, has been behaving with the kind of dynamism that would put the most committed insomniac to sleep:

Three Metallic Amigos
Metals Ratios Continue to Indicate Inflation
And that is welcome for monetary and fiscal policymakers of course, since inflation is the only trick they have up their sleeve to bail this mess out once again. And this is no comment on COVID-19. The economy was slowly decelerating last year well before this guy showed up (I like the picture, okay?)…
The yield curve bottomed and turned up in August of 2019 as manufacturing was slipping, long-term yields were tanking and other economic signals were fraying in the wake of the trade war. So please, no convenient COVID excuses.
(more…)Gold Stock Correction is Maturing
The last time I wrote a title like the above was on June 19th; and wouldn’t you know that the correction ended the very next trading day? The consolidation breakout on Monday, June 22 created the gap you will see as a downside objective on the daily chart of HUI below.
Gold Sector Correction is Maturing (6.19.20)
That was a routine correction as gold and the gold miners were still part of one big relief party as central banks flooded the markets with liquidity to meet the deflationary crisis of the virus-ridden spring.
This time as you can see gold has disconnected from the party (as, obviously, have gold stocks), which continues on its merry way. Some gold bugs may cry foul but what is actually going on is that the normal recipients of cyclical inflation are getting bid as the US dollar declines (inverse USD shown here, rises). If there is an accident along the way to the recovery (or at least the Banana Republic) we will be reminded yet again ‘why gold?’.
(more…)
